The Basis for Sharding on Nerves Blockchain

Blockchain technology has seen tremendous growth and implementation throughout the years since its first inception almost a decade ago. Its promise of decentralization and unprecedented security promises a new world that will radically change how every industry and society will work. Mass adoption is the current Holy Grail of the blockchain industry and the Nerves Blockchain prospects are huge.

While this is all promising, blockchain faces one big obstacle: scalability. In one word, blockchain is notoriously slow and energy expensive. Transaction speeds on a blockchain pale in comparison to a mainstream payment processor, such as Visa, which the world is already used to. And let’s not get into energy consumption: figures have been thrown around comparing blockchain’s energy usage to that of a small country.

Solving Scalability Concerns

The problem with scalability can be zoomed down to the details. Let’s take Ethereum, for example, the second biggest cryptocurrency next to Bitcoin in terms of market capitalization. Currently, a single transaction in Ethereum must go through every single node in the network. While being super secure, the flipside is that the speed of the entire blockchain is determined by the speed of each of its individual nodes.

This creates a scalability problem, because for a blockchain to be ubiquitous, it needs to be Decentralized, Scalable and Secure. Most blockchains can only achieve two: Decentralized and Secure. Because they process transactions slowly, they are therefore not scalable.

A good solution, at least in practical terms, is the concept of Blockchain Sharding and on Nerves, this is put to good use.

Sharding is a technique for separating a larger database into smaller pieces, called data shards. These shards are created with the reason being they are faster and easier to manage and deal with than the network.

Sharding itself is not a concept unique to blockchain, it in fact, exists way before that. Traditional database has been doing it for some time. A common example of sharding involves separating data, such as customer records, on separate servers. These data can be stored based on that record’s geographical location, so that when a customer needs to retrieve their data, it is faster to do so.

We can apply that same concept to the blockchain. Here, we can partition the entire network into separate pieces, each containing their own transaction and state history, independent of other nodes. When a transaction needs to be processed, only certain nodes assigned to that shard will process the transaction. This makes throughput much, much faster since the entire network can process more than one transaction.

The Power of Sharding

Sharding then proposes to speed up the performance of a blockchain since it only must work on a small part of the database and not the entire thing. This is especially pronounced when handling many transactions. Sharding is therefore seen as a potential solution to make blockchains more scalable for widespread adoption.

There is, however, a roadblock. While it is relatively straightforward to perform sharding on a single database, it is very tricky to do it on a blockchain, especially those utilizing the Proof of Work consensus algorithm. This is because of the way the algorithm works, in that it requires all servers or nodes in the network to carry copies of the same data. This ensures accuracy, integrity and safety of the data and all transactions involved with it.

As of the time of this writing, no one has yet discovered a way to use sharding in a blockchain that completely uses a Proof of Work algorithm, but on nerves with DPos algorithm, this works perfectly.

While the Proof of Work consensus algorithm is generally seen as more resistant to hacks or attacks, as it is prohibitively expensive to do so. This is, however, a double-edged sword: that same property also makes such blockchains horribly inefficient and slow in resolving transactions. With Nerves using a best-fit approach on its platform, both security and workability are on the front burner.

Right now, sharding is being used on blockchains that use Proof of Stake algorithm. Nerves is therefore set to lead the sharding implementation initiative, with progress steadily improving. There is no doubt that the Nerves project is set to revolutionize how the world experiences the efficiency of the blockchain. It is certain that other blockchains have made progress in certain areas that are remarkable, but, we are set to deepen efficiency in more ways than one.

Although sharding is a serious contender to solve scalability, it’s not by far the only solution. Potential techniques such as side chains work with better consensus algorithms such as Delegated Proof of Stake, and off-chain protocols. Right now, the smart thing to do would be to investigate and combine one or two of these techniques. Projects such as Lighting, Plasma and Loom Network are testament to this.

As the Nerves team explore the efficiency of the possibilities on the blockchain, the world will come to terms with more blockchain optimization facets that will enhance the way we live and work.

CONCLUSION

Sharding is a promising technology and a potential solution to the scalability problem faced by blockchain projects today. In theory, it is an elegant and efficient solution to speed up transactions’ speeds dramatically. By utilizing a “divide and conquer” methodology, it saves precious transaction time and power. Sharding can potentially also generate less energy waste via less computation power.

While at Nerves the challenges that hacking poses are not overlooked, it is also important that dealing with higher security features is an answer to the concerns of marauders on the chain. We are therefore not fazed by the threats of online spooks as we have provided enough safeguards to keep users and systems safe

As sharding gets successfully implemented, Nerves can be used by developers to potentially compete or even surpass current mainstream payment processors, such as Visa. Such a project would take a giant leap towards adoption. With ever growing research and interest in the area, it won’t be long for a project to finally breakthrough into successful implementation and claim the Holy Grail of mass adoption.

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